NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Goodfellas" cohorts Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese will share insights into their 30-year friendship and collaboration on eight major films in a joint memoir to be published next year, Harmony Books announced on Friday.

The director Scorsese, 61, and actor De Niro, 60, both grew up in New York and first joined forces for the 1973 film "Mean Streets," about young hoodlums making their way in New York's Little Italy.

That launched a friendship that has spanned 30 years and sparked a string of movies that includes "Taxi Driver" (1976), "Raging Bull" (1980), "Goodfellas" (1990) and "Cape Fear" (1991).

"We came from the same New York neighborhood but hung out on different streets," Scorsese said in a statement, adding that their friendship grew with each collaboration.

"We can finish each other's sentences and understand things that are not said," he said. "It's like a professional marriage, and the offspring are the movies."

De Niro's work with Scorsese brought the actor an Oscar for his work in "Raging Bull." He was also nominated for best actor Academy Awards for his roles in "Taxi Driver" and "Cape Fear."

The untitled book is scheduled to be published in 2005, said Harmony Books publisher Shaye Areheart. The book has already been sold to publishers in England, the Netherlands, Israel and Germany.

Harmony Books is a division of The Crown Publishing Group and Random House Inc., which is owned by media group Bertelsmann .

8 films together, and now a bookMartin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, one of the most successful teams in movie history, will co-write a memoir.

Director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro are about to collaborate again. Not around the movie camera this time, but in front of the typewriter, as they co-write a joint memoir looking back at their mutual film exploits.

The book, currently untitled, will be published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House Inc., in fall 2005 and will recount anecdotes from the making of the eight films the two have worked on together since 1973: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "New York, New York," "Raging Bull," "The King of Comedy," "Goodfellas," "Cape Fear" and "Casino."

Although both men grew up in the same New York neighborhood, they never met until 1970 and began working together shortly thereafter.

The famously shy De Niro, who gained notoriety playing violent characters in Scorsese's films, will discuss career achievements with the director, including a best actor Oscar for "Raging Bull," and disappointments, such as the reception of "The King of Comedy."

They will also talk about the loss of their fathers and how their creative and personal friendship has grown and deepened over the years.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Martin Scorsese is keen to revive a cinematic partnership with Robert De Niro that goes back to "Mean Streets" nearly 40 years ago and says the project will be related to the mobster world.

The 67-year-old movie maker was at the Berlin film festival for the premiere Saturday of his latest picture "Shutter Island," his fourth collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Bob De Niro (and I) are talking about something that has to do with that world," Scorsese told reporters after a press screening of Shutter Island, where the audience reaction was decidedly muted.

"There's no doubt about that. We're working on something like that, but it's from the vantage point of older men looking back, none of this running around stuff."

Rumors that Scorsese may be reviving one of film's most successful collaborations have been rife for years, as fans look back with nostalgia to classics such as "Raging Bull," "Taxi Driver" and "Cape Fear."

The Hollywood heavyweights last worked together on "Casino" in 1995.

FEAR AND PARANOIA

For now, attention is focused on Shutter Island, starring 35-year-old DiCaprio as U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels in a psychological thriller set on a wind-swept, rugged island that is home to a high security psychiatric hospital.

In the story based on a Dennis Lehane novel, he and his partner Chuck are brought in to hunt down a killer who has mysteriously escaped from her cell leaving no trace.

Daniels, traumatized by memories of the Nazi concentration camps he liberated as a U.S. soldier, becomes increasingly suspicious of a wider conspiracy and the boundaries between conflicting realities gradually blur.

Asked why the movie was not in the main competition line up in Berlin, Scorsese jokingly replied: "What if it didn't win?"

In Shutter Island, which hits U.S. theatres later this month, the director aims to recreate what he calls an atmosphere of paranoia and fear prevalent in 1950s America when he was growing up during the Cold War.

"I experienced the 50s first hand in New York City, the cold war, the paranoia, the secrecy," he said. "In cinema itself, the movies I would go and see reflected this."

For DiCaprio, Shutter Island was possibly the hardest part he has had to play for Scorsese, along with "The Aviator" in which he portrays the wealthy but increasingly deranged aviator and film maker Howard Hughes.

Asked why he kept coming back to Scorsese, he said: "You'd be a fool not to jump at the opportunity to work with somebody who I consider, and many consider to be the definitive director or our time. You'd be an idiot."

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol